a)There is no sense of reward or punishment in those forums and in the game now. You can be a saint and get nothing or be a complete jackass and get the respect of this mob called junkies, just because you got "swag" (/puke)

b)The game atm can be played almost solo mode. You don't need a guild to do raids - you got lfr. You can get gear from dailies. In BC pve and pvp gear were interlinked - you could pvp in pve gear and vice versa and you had to work with a closely knit team to achieve your goals

c) The moderation is, as the word says, moderate. Moderators are too easy on everyone. Bans are rare. Infractions have too high of a cap. Any sociopath that had problems with his real life, can come here and open fire on everyone without any kind of punishment, UNLESS, someone, somewhere decides to push the report button which is scarcely used

d)"Good" players have no time now. They are "too busy" or afking. I remember in s2, the one that helped me transition from rogue to warrior was a guy named Dustman that was top 5 2s/3s most of s2 and 3. This guy was qing 24/7, but when I asked him for help (multiple times), he literally stopped qing to give me macros and playstyle advice. I am still continuing his legacy of helping others. People turn to me for help in messages and in game whispers while my title collection is the lowest of the low. Why? Because I care to help them

e)Bitches play this game. What do I mean? Instead of working around the imbalances and/or making helpful suggestions on how to improve the game, they just bitch. 24/7 they bitch about everything. "Why is my class weak?"."Why can't I have tattoos on my character?". "Why can't I can't see my character's genitalia to masturbate?".

f)You get the most +rep for posting moronic bullshit and childish insults. Good posts are rarely rewarded.

This AJ, is sending all the new players to either skill-capped or streamers. How many new players are willing to pay money to learn how to pvp? Quite a few. How many new players would pvp if they didn't have to pay to go through the rough learning curve? A lot.

tl;dr If moderation in this place doesn't become way more strict, if no incentives are given to junkies for making guides (even that pet giveaway that Curse does), this situation will keep recycling itself perpetually.

All my recent posts on general were about how unfriendly WoW PvP is to newer players, how brutal and boring the gear grind is, how stupid and archaic the PvP systems are, and so on and so forth. I'm even annoyed at myself for repeating the same things over and over in different threads. Besides, all of these are directed at Blizzard, and the chances of getting any feedback - especially on AJ - are close to zero.

But I want things to happen. So I thought, what can we - the players - do? What can the AJ community do?

First of all, content.

I think everybody agrees that WoW PvP is pretty hard to get into just due to the knowledge required to be successful. Generally speaking, you need to know a lot of things before you can even really enjoy the game and understand what's going on. 40-60 abilities per spec, subtle but important cooldowns, various lethal combinations of cooldowns/spells and their approximate potential, all the important defenses, various interface scripts/addons that could help you, et cetera. This game is only fun when you can actually anticipate things, know when to play safe or when to push (based on their cooldowns), know which things to interfere/stop to prevent your team from using major cooldowns, know when you can be stopped or not... and all this meta game is possible only if you know the game well enough.

It's pointless and nearly impossible to cover all of that in text or video guides. However, what can be covered are all the basic things that new people will ask, like: which talents and glyphs to use, how to gear, gameplay basics (which spells to use, which combos to try and pull off), what is my role in rbg/arena/xyz, which team mates/classes should I look for, which counters to my combos to look out for, where do I place my portal/gate (example of a spec-specific question), which things should I prioritize while I'm new, are there any addons or macros that will make my life easier... You can cover pretty much all the theory.

These basic guides are so valuable, it surprises me that people completely abandoned writing them. When I log on a new class and don't know even the very basics, like how to deal damage most efficiently, I really wish those guides still existed. I just want to get into the head of an experienced [with the spec] player to get answers for all my basic questions; even if I'm guessing what the right answer is, being certain about it would help the learning process a lot. You don't need to make it an in-depth guide where you write 10000 words for every viable comp, you just need to point in the right direction, explain your mindset a little bit, share set-in-stone knowledge (gear/talent/glyph setup), and give some general tips and thoughts. No more, no less.

Back when those guides existed, I would browse other classes guides just to get a better idea of how other classes work. It actually helped me a bit, because I could anticipate certain things better and/or stop them in advance. Sure, I would probably learn it myself even if the guide didn't exist, but that would probably take more time and more losses.

I'm not even mentioning the old matchup guides on AJ back in TBC. We literally had a whole section dedicated to those, i.e. guides about certain comps and how they're played vs other popular comps. It was brilliant.

What do we have today? I'll take the time to open every single sticky on every class forum:

Mage:
- Frost Mage PvP Guide - out of date. Great example of a guide. I think it could be structured and worded better, but Xandyn had the right idea of trying to teach people something. This is what I think every spec should have
- Mage Gear Guide (S11) - out of date
- Mage Basics - out of date (since Season 9!). This is an example of a bad guide, no offense. Character setup is quickly overviewed, then 20 tips are randomly thrown out (of random, specific situations), and that's the whole guide
- Mage PVP Calculators - out of date
- Cataclysm Mage FAQ - out of date (since Season 9!). The author was even kind enough to edit his post and say that it's outdated at the very top, yet it's still a sticky

TLDR: there's only two sticky threads that are up to date at all: Rets and Rogues. Shamans have no guides at all. There's tons of guides and stickies that weren't updated since Season 9 - that's more than 2 years ago! I even found a thread that was a sticky since May 2009, good old WotLK! Come on!

And the worst thing is that all of this outdated information is still getting views, because it's stickied. Because nobody cares, and because there's no new content. It makes me wonder what content editors are doing. No offense guys, but I see some content editors and moderators posting fairly frequently here, yet you can't at least unpin threads that are outdated for several years to not misinform people and to make this very forum look a bit more representative? What do new users think when they see Season 9 info stickied? Uh.

Look at PvE. It's the same game, it has the same problems, but there's so much information about PvE compared to PvP. Go to icy-veins.com and look at the class guides. Remember old Elitist Jerks guides. There's also noxxic.com (I love the concept of this one, but too much bad content). There's a bunch of very popular youtube channels dedicated to boss guides, and they're also available on icy-veins. It takes me a few seconds to find any info I need in PvE. Why don't we have this in PvP anymore?

If we actually help people improve, maybe they will be slightly more interested?

Secondly, forum structure.

Look at "Ask a Gladiator" section. Most threads have 0 replies, occasionally there's a reply, rarely a conversation (mostly trash). No wonder, there's no incentive for a Junkie to ever visit that section. I'm willing to bet that most of the replies in that section are because people randomly bump into those threads via the "fresh threads" stream on front page, "view new content", last post or similar, not by actually visiting the section. It's not that everybody is a douchebag and doesn't wanna help, it's the forum structure not helping that happen.

Class forums, I only visit the warlock and occasionally the DK one, but both are inactive. It wouldn't surprise me if all the other class forums are also inactive - people don't even bother to report sticky threads from Season 9... So I wonder, why are class forums still junkie-only? They could be the perfect place to answer questions and educate people. I used to post a ton on class forums on official forums just because I enjoyed answering questions and helping people, while at the same time refining and reviewing my own knowledge constantly.

Same thing goes for the 2v2/3v3/5v5 subsections of the general discussion section. I don't think they serve any purpose whatsoever anymore. You could drag them out and let non-junkies access them, so there are actual discussions about 2v2/3v3/5v5 matchups instead of being a collection of threads about end of season wintrading.

With some decent moderation, this could work wonders. I don't mean EJ-esque strict moderation. Just remove all the trash replies and warn/ban douchebags. It won't be that hard, really.

Leave general as it is, of course. I'm not suggesting to remove access limitations completely, but right now the non-junkie section is like a ghetto. All I'm suggesting is a bit more integration at the cost of inactive forum sections. Everybody wins.

Speaking of inactive forum sections, another thing that bugs me all the time is all those out of date, useless sections:
- "Blizzard 3v3 Tournament"? TR is down for ages now. And why not call it something like "TR Recruitment" because that's all that it's for? All the actual tournament stream discussions happen in the News threads.
- "Theorycrafting", what's the point of this one? Existed for years, a grand total of 54 topics.
- "NAO Invitational Tournament", when was the last NAO?
- "Content Feedback", I fail to understand what is this for. All the "content" on the site has comment sections for it, why does this section exist? People mistake the "macros" subsection as a forum to ask help with macros, too

I don't think it's healthy when some 20 sections are dead inactive. It sort of reminds you that the game is dead and there's nothing you can do, you know.

And lastly, be nicer to each other. When there's no textual references and all experience and knowledge is shared verbally, it matters more than ever.

Originally posted this on the PTR forum so a lot of the writing is geared more towards that audience, but I thought I might as well post it here as well:

There's a concept I think of as "cooldown commitment" when it comes to dealing damage that I think is really important to recognize. Most burst sequences require that you blow a lot of cooldowns before the damage ever arrives. Warrior's have to blow Avatar/Reck/Trinket/Skull Banner/etc. to swifty people. Rogues have to blow shadow blades + dance. Mages on live have to blow trinket+orb+deep freeze+icy veins+alter time. This is the standard damage model for burst.

In 5.2, Mage cooldown commitment for our biggest burst is quite low. We can turtle until Incanter's Ward is fully absorbed (very easy to guarantee), nova or frostjaw someone, and our only serious cooldown we have to commit for max burst is a damage trinket before our first Frostbolt. If you want to be conservative, your first Frostbolt doesn't really need to have trinket popped, you can just cast it and trinket+icy veins afterwards. Once that frostbolt is in the air, then you can decide to commit to the burst attempt depending on what defensives were used in response to the impending frostbolt. Either you use none, and you baited their cooldowns for nothing, or tons, and you blow people up with pom+alter time+deep freeze frostbolt shatters.

We actually don't have a spare GCD in our 'standard' 5.2 burst sequence to use things like Frozen Orb. That can be saved for in between bursts to build up procs and increase our sustained damage. You can risk telegraphing your burst by using it before the first frostbolt, but it's not usually a good call.

The standard burst model is still fairly difficult for most players to deal with, as few of them require incorruptible casts. This results in a lot of forum QQ because the average player can't tell when huge burst is coming based on subtle instant cast CDs, but is fairly easy to figure out if you're paying attention to the right stuff (Did that Mage use alter time with FoF/BF up? Did that Warrior use Avatar+Reck or just Reck? Did that Rogue dance with shadow blades up?). The 5.2 Mage model has the opposite problem: very little cooldown commitment, but interruptible. The result is that we can try, over and over again, to set up game ending burst, and the first time it isn't recognized and prevented, the cooldown barrage follows and you die without being able to control your character.

These kinds of subtleties aren't usually discussed on these forums and this is probably better suited for its own topic, but 5.2 is going to give a lot of people grief because whereas right now, Mage burst is a game ending threat vs. well geared players every 1.5-3 minutes, on PTR right now we're ALWAYS a threat as long as we save our important burst cooldowns for the times when our small cooldown commitment damage combinations are still enough to guarantee a kill when appropriately followed by uncounterable burst.

One could argue that this is the upside of opening up your defensive tree to interrupts, and that there's going to be times now when we get blown up with no ability to react because we committed our Frost tree to a kill attempt, but I'm not sure that's a big enough disadvantage with interrupts being a shorter duration now than they have been in the past when Mages casted (interrupts used to be as long as 10 seconds).

Food for thought!

edit: The more I think about this problem, the more I see the 'frostbolt does better damage than instants' model maybe only making sense in an environment where melee don't have too-high uptime, and healers actually have to cast. But right now, instants STILL need to be very high, or else every game becomes "train the mage" with guaranteed success. Frostbolt as an ideal spell to cast, and instant casts less threatening than they are now, may be a design that has to wait for 6.0. I'm worried for how they'll adjust the class in light of Frostbolt's buffs, there's no clear path towards an effective class that is neither too strong nor too weak at high levels of play, with Frostbolt staying how it is right now.

5.2 its been emotional but its the fall of the war
rogues lvling up killing the boar,
monks.. gnna hit u to the floor, once i was a big man, now im a bore, avatar dead who wants more, oh the uproar, when i charge stun, avatar reck, hit u in ur neck, kill u in 2 sec, claim skill, get ur a$s then i drill, i do it for the thrill, cos im ill, and ur dead still, but who wants more
rerolling rogue cos im fking hardcore.
to stay on my a game...i gotta bring the pain, reroll to the best class, play arena pass.you know what they say about the grass.

should never have to ask you twice. just be nice, we the same but i got spice. my skills bring chills. and in the game, dont blame that i have a brain.. put me in the frame...

return of the rogue mother fker, eat sh1t and die

kfc and warrior spjust get the fck away from me, the most retarded thing ive ever seen.
its ya boi steeze, loving --> aj communitys, big d, cave creatures, u be the student we be the teachers. auchindoun eu where u can reach us

return of the rogue, its a story thats just being told, boosting for gold, no doubt reckfull is gonna be rerolled, again, flavor of the month aymen

its the return of the rogue, its the fall of the war, straight from the top down to ground floor.warrior tears are about to pour, delicious..candy store. steeze out. u better fking subscribe ill hunt u down with a tribe.. african.. u know my vibe

this songs for the fans, fck the haters and fck the warriors who gloabled steeze when i was jus trying to cap 2s, u lose.

No dude is going to let you touch his wiener if you think you're bad at this game. If you don't think you're good, then you fucking suck. Egos are healthy, it keeps you from sucking. I'd rather takl to someone who thinks they're fucking amazing than some emo little bitch always going "I'm so bad /cut wrist"

-Got A low self esteem bro? you can rent my ego

You are a complete tool. Egos do not keep you from sucking. They are the reason so many players DO suck to play with. I'd rather play w/ someone who is a good person vs. a good player any day. Finding someone who is both is what's really rare/special. It's been a long time since I had the pleasure of playing with people who were great at the game and also great people outside of it, I'm confident I will find some players like that again somewhere down the road. So far this season it seems to be one or the other. In the meantime I'd rather play w/ "bads" who are actually enjoyable to be in skype w/ as opposed to douchebags like yourself who think they are sliced bread and sound like nails on a chalkboard.

I always wondered why egos seem to be so important to arena players everywhere. whether it be titles or just being known as a good player, why does it matter so much? it seems as though people don't even venture to playing with players that may be below their league of play or even above their league of play. i still enjoy just queing with random people from trade because it can be fun, even if you play with someone that is horrible for a night there is always the off-chance that it you could have a lot of fun and maybe even meet someone that is new to arena but could potentially be really good at the game. i know it sounds stupid to even bring up a topic like this but it really seems quite prevalent within the arena community that rapidly decreases everyday, so might as well have fun playing with people that are fun to play with while it lasts.